From Jeremy Piette’s article forLibération:
Many young homosexuals began their sexual initiation quest as teenagers by secretly leafing through the men’s briefs pages of La Redoute, trouble lit by flashlight at night. Others, much luckier, will have stumbled upon the sublime Pink Narcissus , a gem of an extra-kitsch gay film flowing with eroticism, lasting 66 minutes and a few drops of sperm, created anonymously in 1971 – wrongly attributed sometimes to Andy Warhol, sometimes to the emperor of the underground Kenneth Anger– before being claimed in 2001 by James Bidgood, filmmaker, costume designer, decorator and photographer. The film, shot in Super 8 over seven years (1963-1970) in a small apartment in the Hell’s Kitchen district of New York, features a youth with luscious lips and plump buttocks (actor Bobby Kendall), in love with his image, which in turn takes on the role of a toreador, a sultan, a prostitute… tenderly penetrating the ground or licking his fingers in the setting of a Technicolor world with cardboard skin, adorned with mirrors and lights flashy, pink, blue or gold.